A new DC Universe Online Trailer shows off the Oolong Island area in DC Universe Online, SOE's superhero MMORPG that's slated to launch today. In this clip game director Chris Cao introduces this "very odd place" that's filled with mad scientists, and while some of them may be looking to perfect the art of brewing tea, most of them were engaged in creating robots, until things go wrong, as so often happens with mad scientists. The embedded version follows.

RollinThundr wrote on Jan 12, 2011, 05:47:I'm prolly not going in today as I'm pretty sure the town that I work for will be closed, so I'll hopefully have some time to put into it today to get a better feel. Pretty much have the same first impressions as you do though.

Sigh

I was hoping to have a full-on snow day as well. Unfortunately it's looking like it's just a delayed opening, which doesn't mean anything for me because my boss setup teleconferences for this morning at normal business hours that I have to dial into.

So I gain nothing today

Had the snow continued like they were saying on Monday, with getting an additional couple of inches in the morning through 12-Noon I would've been in the clear.

This comment was edited on Jan 12, 2011, 09:50.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

kanniballl wrote on Jan 11, 2011, 22:17:Only had time to really play through the intro level.

Here are my first impressions on PS3.

How fun is it... it's alright. It's a better intro than the Champions Online intro. I tend to like button mashers from time to time, so I like it so far. But I could see why others wouldn't.

Combat... it's more hack and slash than Champions, which is good and bad. I kind of dug it, but I'm not sure yet how long I'll like it. Attacks are button-combos so it's a button masher. Using melee in a group of toons is alright, I guess it's either PbAoE cone or auto-targets nearest melee mob. So far I only have access to a handful of attacks at lvl 3.

Customization... nowhere near Champions Online. Even City of Heroes is a lot more customizable. However, I was able to make some decent looking toons, I just wish there was more diverse stuff in terms of armor-looking things.

Powers... I only tried out "hand blasters" so far, since I like blasters. However I plan on trying some melee weapons soon like staff / dual-wield / hammer.

Voices... Adam Baldwin does alright as Superman but I liked the classic 90s voice better. Baldwin is a little too... raw, I can't help of thinking of Casey or Jane when I hear him. Oracle does a good job with her voice dialog. The Brainiac probes though aren't so hot but I wasn't expecting much from henchmen. So far that's all I've heard besides the intro video w/ Lex and such.

Technical aspects... it FROZE my PS3 entirely during the first play attempt. After creating my toon I tried to start playing. 15 minutes and nothing, then noticed that I couldn't even bring up the Controller-menu to quit out.

I hear that hard-light (Green Lantern) didn't make the cut, I'm sad. I thought I heard an early-early beta preview mention she was playing a hard-light toon but I guess it was too buggy But that's the only real powerset it's missing that I would like.

I played a little bit (pc version) up til about level 3 as well, ironically as a hand blaster as well. It's..different, not sure if its a good different or not yet, I want to give it more time but it being somewhat of a button masher somehow seems to fit in a way.

Customization is pretty non existent so far anyway aside from a couple pieces of armor I got in drops, definitely something that prolly could be a bit better. I think the voice acting is fairly well done, especially Oracle like you mention. Sups did sound a bit dry in the intro. I'm prolly not going in today as I'm pretty sure the town that I work for will be closed, so I'll hopefully have some time to put into it today to get a better feel. Pretty much have the same first impressions as you do though.

How fun is it... it's alright. It's a better intro than the Champions Online intro. I tend to like button mashers from time to time, so I like it so far. But I could see why others wouldn't.

Combat... it's more hack and slash than Champions, which is good and bad. I kind of dug it, but I'm not sure yet how long I'll like it. Attacks are button-combos so it's a button masher. Using melee in a group of toons is alright, I guess it's either PbAoE cone or auto-targets nearest melee mob. So far I only have access to a handful of attacks at lvl 3.

Customization... nowhere near Champions Online. Even City of Heroes is a lot more customizable. However, I was able to make some decent looking toons, I just wish there was more diverse stuff in terms of armor-looking things.

Powers... I only tried out "hand blasters" so far, since I like blasters. However I plan on trying some melee weapons soon like staff / dual-wield / hammer.

Voices... Adam Baldwin does alright as Superman but I liked the classic 90s voice better. Baldwin is a little too... raw, I can't help of thinking of Casey or Jane when I hear him. Oracle does a good job with her voice dialog. The Brainiac probes though aren't so hot but I wasn't expecting much from henchmen. So far that's all I've heard besides the intro video w/ Lex and such.

Technical aspects... it FROZE my PS3 entirely during the first play attempt. After creating my toon I tried to start playing. 15 minutes and nothing, then noticed that I couldn't even bring up the Controller-menu to quit out.

I hear that hard-light (Green Lantern) didn't make the cut, I'm sad. I thought I heard an early-early beta preview mention she was playing a hard-light toon but I guess it was too buggy But that's the only real powerset it's missing that I would like.

This comment was edited on Jan 11, 2011, 22:52.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

kanniballl wrote on Jan 11, 2011, 19:10:Still waiting for the client to download. I thought I was done but now there's another download screen.

I'm just hoping I can hop on before my shows start tonight. Otherwise I'm waiting until tomorrow, which will HOPEFULLY be a snow day.

I went ahead and snagged it off Steam, still downloading the installer, 75% done, hoping to have a snow day tomorrow as well, as we're supposed to get a foot dumped on us here in Mass. If nothing else its something to mess around with for the free month.

Was kind of a dry holiday season this year for games, not much shipping until march that I'm really interested in (Rift, DA2, Deus Ex) Hopefully this can tide me over til then.

JoeNapalm wrote on Jan 11, 2011, 10:20:That said, I look at this trailer and cannot help but make unfavorable comparisons to Batman:Arkham Asylum - it's got that MMO stand and wave attacks in the general direction of your opponent abstraction going on...whereas Asylum did an awesome job of putting you in the cinematcally coreographed boots of Batman.

Oh... I wasn't claiming that it would be anywhere near like Arkham Asylum... MMO's can't even come close to Single Player games when it comes to immersion. So, I'm not trying to compare the two at all!

I was merely saying that folks that are "into" Super-Hero stuff, might be more motivated to try this if they liked that "Batman Game" (Since it's DC).

"Did you even read cutters post or are you just suffering from rectal cranial inversion." - RedEye9

I took the plunge and pre-ordered the PS3 version. I'm gonna pick it up today and hopefully have a snow day tomorrow from work to enjoy it.

@kanniballl

Can you report back here and let us know if there is some kind of unique code that limits each copy to one unique account? I'm hoping that each PS3 copy can simply be inserted into the PS3 and you get to start an account that is linked to your profile...

But I expect it's more likely that they include a code that gives you the ability to create an account. Crossing my fingers, that way I can request it via goozex!

I hope the console MMO's in general adopt this strategy over one unique key per copy purchased, I'd rather see more players have an opportunity to try the game rather than everyone needing to pay that upfront BS cost of buying the game to begin with.

For many smaller MMO's I think they'd find a lot more people willing to pay them $15 and not get a free month at the beginning to start an account rather than sticking with the pay $50 -$60 for the first month, then $15 after that. If you are WoW then do whatever you want obviously, but when you ship something that is not WoW try to give some incentives for more people to try your game. It seems like so many devs think they deserve a $60 upfront payment plus $15 a month because they put "MMO" on their game... MMO's launching today should not be shooting for that goal, none are even close to providing content worthy of that price when you consider what is already on the market today. Understand that you're starting way behind and that you'll need to build to the point where people want to pay you top dollar. Looking at you STO! You should be god damn free and C-store crap should be how you make your money.

kanniballl wrote on Jan 11, 2011, 12:19:Some of the reviews I read said combat is a little less like a traditional MMORPGs and a *little* closer to Batman Arkham asylum. In which case, I'd be cool with that.

Heck, I'd be fine with a single-player game with combat even 1/3 like Batman AA with the added ability to customize my character.

The combat is absolutely nothing like Batman's. I'd ignore any review from a site that said it was, because...it's just not.

It's MMO combat, except you hit a button to attack, hold it down to power up, and...that's kinda it. You get some special abilities that you do a combination of those two things with, there isn't anything even approaching the tactical combat that Arkham Asylum had, or the response from enemies; you're just burning down life bars here.

I had no problems playing it with m/kb on a PC in the beta. The combat is fast-paced and does have more in common with an action game than a traditional MMO. There isn't a TON of customize choices when you create your character, but that's because they decided they wanted you to receive loot that altered your appearance as the game progresses.

I took the plunge and pre-ordered the PS3 version. I'm gonna pick it up today and hopefully have a snow day tomorrow from work to enjoy it.

I grew tired of Champions Online, and frankly the only reason I considered DC Universe Online was because I wanted to play in the DC world.

The Champions Online villains really didn't appeal to me much. I prefer the CO engine above the City of Heroes engine but a large margin, but the City of Heroes villains were better.

That being said, I don't know how much I'll play it. I only recently found out that while they are offering lifetime subscriptions, it's only for the PC version because the Playstation store has a cap on how expensive things can be.

So maybe I'll just use the free 30 days, or maybe a couple of months worth of subscriptions.

"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

wtf_man wrote on Jan 11, 2011, 09:32:I wonder if this one is going to flop. I pretty much have no info due to a complete lack of interest in a "Super-Hero MMO"... so, I assume that if there are many people like me... between CoH and CO... the "Super-Hero MMO" market is already over-saturated.

But hey, then again Batman: Arkham Asylum and it's upcoming sequel may have stirred some interest. (Again, games I wouldn't play... but I know the first one was popular).

Arkham Asylum was a great game. Perhaps not your cup of tea, which is cool - but it was really well done. Definitely looking forward to Arkham City.

That said, I look at this trailer and cannot help but make unfavorable comparisons to Batman:Arkham Asylum - it's got that MMO stand and wave attacks in the general direction of your opponent abstraction going on...whereas Asylum did an awesome job of putting you in the cinematcally coreographed boots of Batman.